One of the key motivations for our study was the serious lack of quantitative data on the pressures facing threatened species in Australia. Many previous papers and SoE reports describe the familiar series of threats to Australian biodiversity – habitat loss, introduced species, inappropriate figure regimes – but do little to quantify them in terms of the proportion of species affected, or their spatial extent at a national, state or local scale.

I give more of a summary of the paper here, but for now I’m really glad to see this work make it into the 2011 SoE. In fact this year’s committee has made an effort move beyond the usual descriptive summary approach to environmental reporting, towards a ‘report-card’ style of assessment currently being undertaken by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Healthy Waterways monitoring in Moreton Bay.

Despite promising investment by all jurisdictions in addressing the main pressures on biodiversity, pressures are not being reduced substantially, nor is the decline in biodiversity being arrested or reversed.

Interestingly, this report appears to be one of the first occasions where economic growth has been discussed as one of three main drivers of environmental change, with the other two being climate change and population growth. It makes the following point:

Just as an increasing population does not necessarily translate proportionately to increased environment impact, neither does a growing economy. However, there is strong historical evidence that this has been the case and thus will likely continue into the future. As the economy of Australia expands, it is likely that our consumption of resources and production of waste will also increase.

It then goes on to repeat a recommendation made by the OECD for Australia to “make concerted efforts to decouple environmental pressures from economic growth”, and the provides a couple of examples where progress has been made in relative decoupling via decreases in water consumption and enhanced recycling efforts.

I remain sceptical of the likelihood of decoupling economic growth and environmental impact to the point where the trend in biodiversity would be reversed. That said, it’s good to see discussion of these ultimate drivers in the SoE report.

Another interesting image from this section, is the percent employment by industry in Australia over time: